It was a presentation that would have made Steve Jobs proud. Just as Jobs knew how to stun the public and the press with a shiny new Apple product, Apple lawyer Harold McElhinny was smooth and direct in his presentation. Using big bold slides, and a bit of video to show off the best features, he laid out a simple version of smartphone history that put his client at the center: Apple came first. Imitators like Samsung followed. And now it's time for them to pay up.

How did Samsung move from the phones it was making in 2006 to the sleek, large-screen smartphones it was selling in 2010, asked McElhinny? "To answer that question, we have to go back to January 9, 2007," he told the jury. "That's when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at the Macworld conference."

McElhinny's monologue, a bit over an hour, was like a sleek Apple marketing pitch, with legal language seamlessly mixed in. The speech was the first building block of Apple's giant patent case against Samsung. The iconic Cupertino company wants more than $2.5 billion in damages from its Korean competitor, as well as injunctions that would kick Samsung's products off the market.

At times McElhinny waxed rhapsodic about his client, its innovative culture, and the products it created.

"At the same time Mr. Jobs introduced the iPhone, he warned his competitors that he had filed for patent protection on more than 200 new inventions in the phone," he said. "Over 200 new inventions—let's think about what that means. It's about creating... a user experience so unique and intuitive that it just feels right."

Apple is a company that "always has its eye on the future," McElhinny continued: "What the world needed, and it didn't have, was a phone that had the capabilities of a computer. Apple designed an entirely new product—a phone, a Web browser, and a music player. It was a phone design that the world had never seen. Physical keyboards would become a thing of the past. It required an entirely new hardware system. It required an entirely new user interface. That interface had to become completely intuitive."

Critics had hailed the iPhone, too, McElhinny said. Slides flashed by—The New York Times and Wired lavishing praise on the iPhone, Time calling it the 2007 Invention of the Year.

"What struck me about the iPhone was—there's no manual," said McElhinny. "You had to walk into the store, pick it up, and get drawn in to use the device. If that didn't happen immediately—you'd never buy it."

Then McElhinny inveighed against Samsung, the accused copier.

"Apple's competitors immediately recognized the impact of the new device," said McElhinny. "Samsung was faced with a choice: it could come up with its own designs, and beat Apple fairly in the marketplace. Or it could copy Apple."

And copy Apple it did, he said, producing sleek black-faced phones with big screens and using the same user-interface features that Apple had patented, like a "bounce back" feature for scrolling and a method of navigating screens with a quick double tap.

"At the highest corporate levels, Samsung decided to copy every element of the iPhone," said McElhinny.

The press had noticed, too. "Samsung Vibrant rips off iPhone 3G design," read one headline that was shown to the jury.

Next up in the Apple-approved history: the iPad. "Can you believe the iPad has only been around for two years?" said a briefly awed McElhinny, going on to call it "magical" and "revolutionary," echoing the bubbly headlines of 2010 and Apple's own marketing.

Quick videos demonstrated the features of each of Apple's three utility patents in the case. One was over the "rubber band" feature, where documents or images snap back into place when a finger pushes them off a touchscreen; another covered the idea of allowing a double-tap to navigate a screen without zooming out. The company alleges those features popped up in Samsung phones shortly after being patented by Apple.

The jury should reject any suggestion that the user-interface features Apple designers cooked up are unimportant, warned McElhinny. The patented features were important so that customers could "intuitively" use the devices. "My four-year-old granddaughter taught herself to use an iPad," he said. "If these were trivial, why did they show up in your [Samsung's] customer surveys, and why did you copy them?"

McElhinny ended with a promise that the jury will see the story in Samsung's own documents. Those documents—acquired during painstaking discovery and translated into English—show more than 100 instances where Samsung altered its phones and tablets to achieve the goal of making them "identical to Apple products," he said.

The attorney accused Samsung of profiting enormously from its strategy. Samsung has made more than 22 million infringing phones, which have earned more than $2 billion in profit, according to Apple's calculations.

Samsung's defense: it's competition, not infringement

Within a few minutes of his opening, Verhoeven was wheeling through slides of patent designs from Japan and Korea that reached back to 2006, 2005, even back to 2004—years before the iPhone was launched.

"This is the Korean '547 patent," said Verhoeven. "Again, you've got a large rectangular screen."

Apple's products may be successful, Verhoeven noted, but that doesn't mean the company was first to create these innovations—they're not true inventions. "There's a distinction between commercial success and inventing something."

Same story with the iPad. Verhoeven showed computer tablets with similar forms stretching back to a 1994 tablet called the "Fiddler."

"They didn't invent a large touchscreen with rounded corners," said Verhoeven. That had been made before—it's just that it had taken years for the market to demand such large screens.

"We're not saying it wasn't a great product," said Verhoeven. "It was inspiring to everyone, including the competition."

Cell phones evolved. "As functionality increased, the entire industry moved towards screens that are much, much larger," he said. "Nobody's going to want to watch a movie on a tiny little screen."

"Is that infringement?" he continued. "No, the evidence is going to show, that's competition. It's providing the consumer what the consumer wants. If the consumer wants a phone with a large screen and touch face, Samsung provides that. It's not some Johnny-come-lately developing knockoffs. It's creating technology that is what people want."

Samsung makes all kinds of phones, Verhoeven said. Phones that slide, "folder-type" flip phones, and "bar type" phones with big screens that look more similar to Apple's products.

"Unlike Apple, that basically makes just one kind of phone, Samsung makes all kinds of phones for all kinds of people."

Verhoeven also touted his client's history of innovation—a pioneer in the mobile business since 1991, Samsung employs more than 20,000 engineers and has invested $35 billion in research and development just from 2005 to 2010, he said. The company is no "copyist," Verhoeven said. "Samsung is a major technology company, doing its own innovation."

The presentation was a sometimes choppy follow-up to McElhinny's smooth attack a few minutes before. Verhoeven read many slides directly and seemed to repeat his themes; a video had volume that jumped up and down wildly, and even stopped playing at one point.

A stressful first day with a smaller jury

It wasn't just Samsung's strained presentation; the day had a stressful feeling from the start. The hallway was packed with dozens of reporters, lawyers, and observers, who filed into the court minutes before arguments began.

Stress was the first thing the judge wanted to talk about, in fact. One of the jurors was feeling stressed, to the point of having panic attacks, said US District Judge Lucy Koh. The situation with the juror's pay wasn't made clear by her boss, and she wanted off the jury. Koh checked that the parties had no objections and then let her go, turning the ten-person jury into a panel of nine.

Before opening arguments even started, stress turned into sparks, as a Samsung lawyer beseeched Koh to kick out one of Apple's slides.

"Your Honor, I've been practicing 36 years, and I've never begged the court," said John Quinn, name partner at Quinn Emanuel, Samsung's law firm. "I'm begging the court now to hear this issue—"

"I've reviewed what you filed yesterday," said Koh, testily. "I heard argument on this yesterday. Mr. Quinn, please, we've had three reconsiderations on this."

"Can I ask the court for some explanation?" said Quinn.

"Mr. Quinn, don't make me sanction you, please. You've had two, if not three, if not four opportunities to brief this."

"Can I change the subject?" asked Quinn.

"No," said Koh. "I want you to sit down. Please."

Openings began shortly after that and went past the lunch break. They were followed by the first witness, Apple designer Christopher Stringer, listed as an inventor on many of Apple's patents. Stringer, a lanky middle-aged man with shoulder-length gray hair and a goatee, didn't take the stand until almost 3:00. The iPhone was an "icon," he said simply, "the most beautiful of our designs."

He was even-keeled, but the designer didn't mince words. "We've been ripped off, it's plain to see," he said. "By Samsung in particular."

After Stringer stepped down, Apple VP Philip Schiller took the stand for just a few minutes. The trial now takes a break until Friday, when Schiller will re-take the stand.

396 Reader Comments

This sort of BS always pisses me off. An infant can learn that patting the screen in iPhoto causes the picture to change, sure, big deal - that's irrelevant. Get back to me when she select and copy text or open a link in Safari in a new tab.

You really need to watch a child with an iPad sometime. My 3-year-old can switch apps via gestures and navigate the springboard.

So? What's your point? Just because something is intuitive doesn't mean it should be patentable and shouldn't be copyable. Props and all for coming up with it but you shouldn't be able to hold on to it. Keyboards, mice, and gestures and swipes shouldn't belong to anybody, period.

"Changed everything" is a pretty excessive description of "Popularized the PDA".

Sorry, but I owned several PDAs, the original iPhone was far, far more advanced than any PDA of the day--and did change everything. Lets see...a usable web browser and email, a video and music player that didn't kill the battery in 30 min., a stylus-free touchscreen, durable glass and metal construction instead of cheap, soft scratch prone plastics...the list goes on and on..

I think people have forgotten how bad phones and PDAs were before mid-2007.

Minus the phone, a palm life drive did all that. OK, still needed a stylus, but whoopie.

Development of the Apple Newton platform started in 1987. The PDA category did not exist for most of Newton's genesis, and the phrase "personal digital assistant" was coined relatively late in the development cycle by Apple's CEO John Sculley, the driving force behind the project.

I'm very impressed with the comments on here, well done everyone no blatant fanboyism. My only complaint are for those who say Apple only grabs things that exist before and throw them together in a much more appealing product. I hope this is said with some tongue and cheek because it is obviously not that easy and I personally can't come up with other companies that do this. I'm sure there are a few compaines out there that also do what Apple does. Also this case is not a simple case of rectangles and owning the rights to rectangles. It is a much more nuance then that. Judge Koh is very capable and intelligent Judge who, as we can already see, won't be taking guff from either company. Samsung especially should take note, in light of what happen after the trial.

"Changed everything" is a pretty excessive description of "Popularized the PDA".

Sorry, but I owned several PDAs, the original iPhone was far, far more advanced than any PDA of the day--and did change everything. Lets see...a usable web browser and email, a video and music player that didn't kill the battery in 30 min., a stylus-free touchscreen, durable glass and metal construction instead of cheap, soft scratch prone plastics...the list goes on and on..

I think people have forgotten how bad phones and PDAs were before mid-2007.

The Samsung Galaxy SII and SIII use plastic cases. That's one of the nice things about the phones - they have a nice texture, are more durable, and are much lighter than phones that go heavy on the metal frames and glass ornamentation.

"McElhinny showed jurors an internal Samsung product analysis which said the iPhone's hardware was 'easy to copy.' Another document prepared by a Samsung executive said the company was in a 'crisis of design' due to the iPhone."

"McElhinny showed jurors an internal Samsung product analysis which said the iPhone's hardware was 'easy to copy.' Another document prepared by a Samsung executive said the company was in a 'crisis of design' due to the iPhone."

Shit... I guess Palm had a time machine and went into the future, saw what Apple was doing, then went back to their own time and tried to recreate the iPhone with the parts of the time. What they got was an inferior product due to their being stuck further back in the past, but damn... THOSE COPYCATS.

And anyone else talking about their children who can use Apple products.

No one fucking cares. It adds nothing to this article, and proves nothing.

Kudos to Apple for presenting such a sleek case to the Jury, this is going to work a lot in their favour, unfortunately. Or maybe the jurors will be unbiased towards how well a presentation is orchestrated... Doubt it.

"McElhinny showed jurors an internal Samsung product analysis which said the iPhone's hardware was 'easy to copy.' Another document prepared by a Samsung executive said the company was in a 'crisis of design' due to the iPhone."

Your post means what for the second time?

That people have responded to the pic I posted (to which reasonable people may certainly take issue with, and as such I'm definitely still open and listening to said criticism), but absolutely *no one* has responded to the substance, i.e. the actual quote from Samsung's internal documents.

"Changed everything" is a pretty excessive description of "Popularized the PDA".

Sorry, but I owned several PDAs, the original iPhone was far, far more advanced than any PDA of the day--and did change everything. Lets see...a usable web browser and email, a video and music player that didn't kill the battery in 30 min., a stylus-free touchscreen, durable glass and metal construction instead of cheap, soft scratch prone plastics...the list goes on and on..

I think people have forgotten how bad phones and PDAs were before mid-2007.

And anyone else talking about their children who can use Apple products.

No one fucking cares. It adds nothing to this article, and proves nothing.

Kudos to Apple for presenting such a sleek case to the Jury, this is going to work a lot in their favour, unfortunately. Or maybe the jurors will be unbiased towards how well a presentation is orchestrated... Doubt it.

What's sad is that neither Apple's "sleek case" nor the people talking about how easy their products are to use really have anything to do with the real issue. Apple's case was all emotion marketing gunk, with a sprinkle of fact that may have been outright irrelevant at times.

The questions are: Did Samsung copy Apple? The proof presented in this thread is already a clear "no". This is no longer up for debate. Should Apple be able to patent most of the things it's trying to patent? Debatable, but mostly no.

"McElhinny showed jurors an internal Samsung product analysis which said the iPhone's hardware was 'easy to copy.' Another document prepared by a Samsung executive said the company was in a 'crisis of design' due to the iPhone."

Easy to copy hardware != samsung copied the hardwareBesides... if it was just copying the hardware then it would be pretty straightforward, wouldn't it?If A=A then busted.

And since when does an executive complaining of a "crisis of design" mean anything?This happens all time, to both explain where he thinks development is and to also send a message to the developers.

"McElhinny showed jurors an internal Samsung product analysis which said the iPhone's hardware was 'easy to copy.' Another document prepared by a Samsung executive said the company was in a 'crisis of design' due to the iPhone."

Your post means what for the second time?

That people have responded to the pic I posted (to which reasonable people may certainly take issue with, and as such I'm definitely still open and listening to said criticism), but absolutely *no one* has responded to the substance, i.e. the actual quote from Samsung's internal documents.

And anyone else talking about their children who can use Apple products.

No one fucking cares. It adds nothing to this article, and proves nothing.

The article says

Quote:

The jury should reject any suggestion that the user-interface features Apple designers cooked up are unimportant, warned McElhinny. The patented features are important so that customers could "intuitively" use the devices. "My four-year-old granddaughter taught herself to use an iPad," he said. "If these were trivial, why did they show up in your [Samsung's] customer surveys, and why did you copy them?"

If Apple is using it as part of their legal defence then it is relevant.

Besides I can't see the difference between Apple and Samsung fighting and three year olds fighting.

Using big bold slides, and a bit of video to show off the best features, he laid out a simple version of smartphone history that put his client at the center: Apple came first.

I hope he didn't say that in so many words. Lawyers are expected to spin the evidence and the law in the way most favorable to their clients, but they aren't supposed to outright lie. It's sort of against the rules.

I was looking at Dell's new XPS line of laptops. If anything, they are a blatant copy of Apple's design. But Apple knows Windows is not very powerful right now, so not a threat. This case is less about protecting your patents, and more about preemptive strikes against the opposition.

"McElhinny showed jurors an internal Samsung product analysis which said the iPhone's hardware was 'easy to copy.' Another document prepared by a Samsung executive said the company was in a 'crisis of design' due to the iPhone."

Your post means what for the second time?

That people have responded to the pic I posted (to which reasonable people may certainly take issue with, and as such I'm definitely still open and listening to said criticism), but absolutely *no one* has responded to the substance, i.e. the actual quote from Samsung's internal documents.

"Changed everything" is a pretty excessive description of "Popularized the PDA".

Fun fact: Apple coined the term 'Personal Digital Assistant'.

Yes the Message Pad (Newton). That is like abandoning your kid for a dozen odd years and coming back when your life is easier and the kid is grown up to the point that you don't have to worry about the difficult stuff. Oh wait, did Steve Jobs pioneer that too?

iconmaster wrote:

charleski wrote:

This sort of BS always pisses me off. An infant can learn that patting the screen in iPhoto causes the picture to change, sure, big deal - that's irrelevant. Get back to me when she select and copy text or open a link in Safari in a new tab.

You really need to watch a child with an iPad sometime. My 3-year-old can switch apps via gestures and navigate the springboard.

So Apple products have come to replace the TV as the babysitter. What a nice improvement.

"McElhinny showed jurors an internal Samsung product analysis which said the iPhone's hardware was 'easy to copy.' Another document prepared by a Samsung executive said the company was in a 'crisis of design' due to the iPhone."

Your post means what for the second time?

That people have responded to the pic I posted (to which reasonable people may certainly take issue with, and as such I'm definitely still open and listening to said criticism), but absolutely *no one* has responded to the substance, i.e. the actual quote from Samsung's internal documents.

"McElhinny showed jurors an internal Samsung product analysis which said the iPhone's hardware was "easy to copy." Another document prepared by a Samsung executive said the company was in a "crisis of design" due to the iPhone."

To answer your...second question, in the link you posted...I see two quotes of internals, both consisting of 3 words...both of which are extremely vague and something easily expected from any of Apple's competition. I havent seen the whole quote (just the shitty out-of-context one that I feel a need to set on fire and laugh), but if that is the best theyve got...

The key to this trial will be in those Samsung e-mails McElhinny was promising. If Apple can show that a substantial part of Samsung's design process was "don't do that, do what Apple did," given the similarity in the devices themselves, Samsung is sunk.

Because that clearly demonstrates (a) you CAN make a smartphone different than the iPhone, (b) Samsung could have easily done so, and (c) chose not to anyways.

Not necessarily. There's absolutely no question in m mind that Samsung copied the iPhone, going to such an extreme as to skin Android to make it appear even more iPhone-like. However, copying by itself is not infringement. The question will come down to whether the features they copied are protected IP.

"McElhinny showed jurors an internal Samsung product analysis which said the iPhone's hardware was 'easy to copy.' Another document prepared by a Samsung executive said the company was in a 'crisis of design' due to the iPhone."

Easy to copy hardware != samsung copied the hardwareBesides... if it was just copying the hardware then it would be pretty straightforward, wouldn't it?If A=A then busted.

And since when does an executive complaining of a "crisis of design" mean anything?This happens all time, to both explain where he thinks development is and to also send a message to the developers.

Very few people get corporate legal training, and the tiny smidgeon I've had indicates that you should never put anything in an email that you wouldn't be comfortable seeing used in court or in the media at some future point. You never know what's around the corner, and emotive phrases stand out.

"McElhinny showed jurors an internal Samsung product analysis which said the iPhone's hardware was "easy to copy." Another document prepared by a Samsung executive said the company was in a "crisis of design" due to the iPhone."

I hope you know that apple didn't invent those smart covers either, so you can't claim samsung copied apple.

Sorry, but those are just designs that Samsung toyed with in 2006, those were not released to the market. So, why all those Samsung cellphones in the picture are turned off?, can you give any model name? can i find those in Amazon? i don't think so. Apple actually took the full risk in January 2007. You can find for iPhone prototypes from 2005, earlier than those "Samsung designs " that you showed.

"McElhinny showed jurors an internal Samsung product analysis which said the iPhone's hardware was 'easy to copy.' Another document prepared by a Samsung executive said the company was in a 'crisis of design' due to the iPhone."

Easy to copy hardware != samsung copied the hardwareBesides... if it was just copying the hardware then it would be pretty straightforward, wouldn't it?If A=A then busted.

And since when does an executive complaining of a "crisis of design" mean anything?This happens all time, to both explain where he thinks development is and to also send a message to the developers.

Very few people get corporate legal training, and the tiny smidgeon I've had indicates that you should never put anything in an email that you wouldn't be comfortable seeing used in court or in the media at some future point. You never know what's around the corner, and emotive phrases stand out.

Ok, then lets re-include Steve Jobs' comments about how he would bankrupt the company to take out Android. After all, you should always be responsible for what you say (or what companies you represent).

"McElhinny showed jurors an internal Samsung product analysis which said the iPhone's hardware was "easy to copy." Another document prepared by a Samsung executive said the company was in a "crisis of design" due to the iPhone."

I hope you know that apple didn't invent those smart covers either, so you can't claim samsung copied apple.

Sorry, but those are just designs that Samsung toyed with in 2006, those were not released to the market. So, why all those Samsung cellphones in the picture are turned off?, can you give any model name? can i find those in Amazon? i don't think so. Apple actually took the full risk in January 2007. You can find for iPhone prototypes from 2005, earlier than those "Samsung designs " that you showed.

Obviously you ignored the final product of that, which I already posted.

Apple's claim: You infringe our patents by using rectangles with rounded corners.

Apple's opening statement: Our products are innovative because my four year old can use them and the money-driven fad chasing tech press says so. Therefore Samsung owes us billions of dollars.

Samsung's opening statement: Our smartphones have been using rectangles and rounded corners since well before the iPhone or iPad came into existance. Their patent claims are overly broad, and possibly should be invalid. Here is some evidence.

Ars' reporting: Apple and had a slick and impressive presentation. Samsung repeated themselves and had a video that kept stopping during playback. Apple wins!

My take: So Apple delivered a completely irrelevant opening statement designed to resonate with a clueless jurry, the judge is full of bologna and trying force this into farce into a shoebox to get it out of her hair, while Samsung delivered an opening statement that actually addresses the facts at issue (patents, and prior art), and because of that, they will lose. And Ars reports on it like a Mac fanboy.

I think you guys need to run an editorial that looks at every single claim at issue one by and points out how none of them should even be patentable.

Anyone who has a set of eyes can see that Samsung is a copy-cat. We've all known these Asian companies to be in a large way, knock-off artists. Come on now...

Samsung so clearly took the design direction from Apple, and I think Apple has a right to defend their brand and product line.

Look at RIM with their BlackBerry line, and their PlayBook Tablet. There is all the proof you need right there that you can create something in the same genre, but with uniquely -and identifiably- different design direction.